A fairly obnoxious but not unintelligent criticism of one angle of Obama's inauguration speech: the bizarre denigration of leisure. It's true that Obama might have been driving home the conservative work-ethic angle a bit too hard. But then, the author fails to mention that this was in the context of a speech which seriously played to McCain voters, an angle which will be necessary to build the broad alliance Obama will need to put his policies in motion. (Policies which, mind you, are probably more in line with the author's politics than the speech was.) He also doesn't bother mentioning that Obama was aiming this directly at Wall Street's culture of greed, not at the free time of academics like himself. But, fair to say that ... More »